XWAU02-- Adventures in Babysitting A-Xros Time and Space
by UruExplorer DTC
Summary: Rei Ayanami recollects on her various adventures babysitting the children of Xros Heart's team members over the years that passed after Quartzmon's defeat.
1. File 1

**ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING A-XROS TIME AND SPACE.**

* * *

**File 1. Nyarko Amano-Aonouma**

* * *

"Oh! Rei! Could I talk with you for a moment?"

The Evangelion Pilot who had recently become a Royal Knight under the service of King Shoutmon turned around on her heels at the calling of her name.

The Denizen Echidna and her Host Nene Amano-Aonouma, was walking down the hallway towards her, smiling politely, yet somewhat urgently.

"Hi, Rei," Nene said.

"Yo," Rei Ayanami gave a quick nod of her head in greeting, "what's up?"

"Okay right so..." Nene quickly explained the situation: "Since your Earth got brought in, you know how Kiriha and I have had to meet with all the surviving world leaders and all that Jazz?"

"Right," Rei nodded. "What about it?"

"Well, I usually have Kotone baby sit Nyarko whenever she has to do something like this, but tonight she just got called in to join one of these meetings too," Nene said with a smile, "So I was wondering if you could take her place tonight keeping an eye on Nyarko?"

"I dunno, Nene..." Rei scratched at her nose. "I'm a great Eva Pilot, sort of an okay Knight so far, but a baby sitter...?"

"Please, Rei...!" Nene clapped her hands together and bowed sharply, "Shoutmon says he doesn't know anyone else who'd be better for the job!"

Drat. Rei grumbled. Of course the King would recommend her.

"Alright, I'll do it." What else could she say?

**LATER THAT NIGHT_ _ _|**

Nyarko was a cute girl at age Five, having been born about eight months after Rei had visited "Earth-2" through sheer luck and inter-dimensional shenanigans.

Silver hair, Emerald Green eyes- Rei could see this girl causing a lot of trouble when she was older. But then again, she was already causing trouble, and had been since she'd been born.

Rei suddenly came to an understanding as to why Shoutmon had told Nene to come ask her to baby sit...and why Kotone had been Nyarko's go-to baby sitter in the past.

"Alright, kid," Rei said calmly, "give me back my sword, please."

Nyarko was a living inventory system- one look and a blink- POOF- and something would be gone.

Such as happened to Rei's sword, which she had drawn out to polish while Nyarko had been distracted by the TV...or so Rei had thought.

The first commercial break that had occurred, and the sword had literally vanished out of Rei's hands in the blink of an eye. Literally, in this case. Nyarko had giggled and clapped like she'd just done something impressive, which lead Rei to identifying her as the culprit.

"Nuh uh!" Nyarko shook her head. "My Shiny!"

"..." Rei frowned. "And here I thought the Terrible Twos only lasted until you hit three."

It was to be expected of a child who was the spawn of the Denizens- beings with powers so wide and varried that they were very often mistaken for Living Gods!

Rei, having faced off against such beings in the past, notably and primarily the Angels of her world and the Horror Terrors of that one Dimension she had visited once, decided that Nyarko here could not possibly be at their power levels just yet...

Although that temper, on the other hand...

"Please?" Rei asked, "It's my shiny precious sword! They gave it to me for joining his personal guard!"

"No!" Nyarko shook her head, giggling, "It's My Shiny now!"

Rei's eye twitched, and somewhere, deep down in the part of her consciousness cloned from then Angel Lilith, Rei suppressed the constant stream of thought about babies to offhandedly wonder if the Universe hadn't given this girl the same name as that Nyarlhotep Rei had met once out of spite.

"Okay...Nyarko-chan?" Rei began, "What could I give you that you'd want more than my shiny sword?"

"Uhhhh..." The girl's green eyes screwed in towards each other, focusing in cross-eyed on her nose as she thought of something. Rei blinked at the motion, and wondered if there wasn't a hidden, second personality inside this kid that was causing all of this. "CHOCOLATE!"

"Chocolate." Rei repeated, and then sighed. Just what the kid needed this late at night. "Of course." She stood up, and went to search the candy bin. "I'll get you your chocolate if you promise to return my sword and never take it again, kapiche?"

"'Kaay!" Nyarko agreed, then blinked, and then Rei's sword re-appeared on the table with a clatter. "Chocolate now!"

"Alright alright, I'm getting it...!"

Rei cast a glance back at Nyarko. Yup. This kid was definitely going to be a problem in the years to follow.

**ELEVEN YEARS LATER_ _ _|**

"Please!" Nyarko's green eyes batted at the boy before her.

"No," Mahiro rebuked the 16 year old.

"PLEASE MAHIRO-SAAAN!" Nyarko pleaded. "Can't we go take the DeLorean for a test drive?"

"My dad says we shouldn't mess with time travel," Jules remarked as they walked down the road from the Hinomoto residence. "Quartzmon might get us."

"C'MON!" Nyarko lamented. "Quartzmon's just the boogey-mon! You know they only made him up to scare kids into behaving!"

"But he's not," Kuuko, who had been silent the entire time, spoke up quietly. "I saw him once..."

"When you were five!" Nyarko waved it off. "But come on! That was so totally Uncle Ren in a tacky costume!"

"This coming from the girl who believes that she's the reincarnation of of an Eldritch Deity," Mahiro remarked. "Look, Nyarko, I'm all for having an adventure like our parents did, but we can't go stealing a DeLorean for a Joy Ride. Who knows what kind of havoc we'd cause."

"They wouldn't even know we were gone, Ma-hi-ro-saaaan!" Nyarko protested. "I just captchalog it, we go have our fun, come back early, and I put it back at the same moment we borrowed it!"

"...Maybe..." Kuuko thought it over. "Maybe we could just look at it, and just sort of...Keep our distance from it?"

"YEAH!" Nyarko cheered.

"As long as it's out of Nyarko's captchaloging distance," Jules said, "I suppose that'd be alright."

"THREE FOR FOUR!" Nyarko yelped. "MAJORITY RULES!"

Mahiro sighed, "Fine. I'll come too. Someone's gotta make sure you stay out of range, after all."

* * *

_**When asked after the DeLorean Incident, Rei Ayanami was interviewed by a NERV investigator.**_

**So, Rei, you've been babysitter for pretty much every kid of the Xros Heart team. What can you tell me about Nyarko?**

"I baby sat her for years, off and on. Less so since she was the oldest of the lot, but..." Rei would comment, "I never could get a solid grasp on her like I did the other kids. Then again, almost everyone else didn't have the lineage of The Father and the Mother of all Monsters. You'd think that'd maybe give us something to relate to, given that Lilith was the Mother of all life on this Earth and I was cloned from her... But nope. Nyarko was about as uncontrollable as the kids got. She went ahead and did what she wanted regardless of what others told her...Unless you made a deal out of it."

**How so?**

"The first time I baby sat her, Nyarko stole my sword. I had to make a deal so that way she wouldn't steal it again. I got her chocolate once, and she'd never touch the thing again. And I've NEVER seen her even so much as look at that sword since."

**Could something like that have adverted the DeLorean incident?**

"Nah. No way. Nyarko would've twisted the deal in her favor. It's all about equivalent exchange for her. If she's not happy with the deal, she won't accept it. I don't got a clue how anyone could have gotten Nyarko to not go after that DeLorean though. It was just too shiny, I think. That's one thing that's always been constant with her. If something shiny gets her attention, she's going to get her hands on it somehow, even if she has to make a deal later so that she never touches it again. It's the thrill of the hunt, in a way. I had to be careful whenever I looked after her, or had her around with the other kids. She just wanted too much impulsively, and caused too much trouble."

**What are your thoughts on the DeLorean Incident?**

"I really hope they're all okay. An explosion like that from a time machine...? Plus the unfortunate placement of that exit road going down the same street that Go-Kun and I came through years ago... Two rifts on the same spot? Somehow I don't think that's a coincidence."

**Were you there when it happened?**

"Nah, I was off world on Aincrad, at Strider's request. He wanted me to help with the Team selections that would be happening in three weeks. I'm pretty sure that's not going to happen now, though. 'Specially with that new project my brother's got running."

**Speaking of that, would you think Nyarko would fit in on that team, had she a chance to join?**

"Hah! _Nyarko_? Did you _**see**_ what she went as for Halloween the last six years in a row? Toku-shows are one of her favorite things _**ever**_. When she finds out she bailed out just before a real-life Super Sentai plot started in her own back yard? I'll bet you ten thousand dollars that she'll blow a gasket and demand that Kaiyumi makes her like...The "Kamen Ranger" or something! She's always had the stronger thirst for adventure among the older kids."

**Do you think that 'thirst for adventure' might have caused all of this?**

"With all of Xros Heart's kids...Definitely. They've heard all of these stories from just about everyone about how they ran across time and space hunting down Quartzmon. I've baby sat just about all of them at some point in their lives, and I've gotta say that I don't thing growing up in that kind of environment leaves anything but a huge shadow. Honestly, I'm surprised as many of them came out as well mannered as they did, considering all of that, and all the bad influence _***I***_ probably put in front of them just by watching them as often as I did."

**I'm sure you didn't do that bad of a job.**

"When we get to Merry, I'm pretty sure you're going to have a different opinion of me."

_**END FILE.**_


	2. File 2

**FILE 2. "Merry Mashimo"**

* * *

Daughter of Hideaki Mashimo and Rina/Rock Shinomiya. Age 16. Trained in the PawnChessmon Brigades on AINCRAD for Six years, starting at the age of Ten. Present occupation is as Kyoryuger Blue: "The Armored Heroine."

* * *

**What happened with Merry?**

"Do you really want me to do her next?" Rei Ayanami asked. "Wouldn't you rather know more about Kuuko or Mahiro?"

**She is one of the kids now entrusted with the protection of the Earth...and since you brought her up...?**

"Ugh, fine fine...Alright, I'll tell you, but I was seriously wanting to put this off for a bit. It's kind of weird..."

**I think I can handle weird, Miss Ayanami.**

"Alright well...it was just before Merry's Seventh Birthday... Her parents were upset by a couple a ghosts that had been popping up during travel on SpaceTrailmon, and-"

**Ghosts?**

"Yes. Ghosts. Blue zappy things that made the time engines stall out."

**Are they still a threat?**

"Eh? Have you HEARD of ghosts attacking time ships since then? No, they vanished after those passengers tried freeing them. So it obviously worked."

**So what happened?**

"So Rina and Hideaki were trying to find those passengers disappeared trying to free the ghosts from whatever was trapping them. They'd been going out on scouting trips in that general area of time space trying to find those kids, but they left Merry behind so she didn't get scared, or worse."

**So you were watching her?**

"Yeah, just a bit before her birthday... I'd done it before a lot of times before. Longer time trips and missions kept Rina and Hideaki away alot when Merry was a kid. But usually I'd group watch her with the other kids. Nyarko and Callie, usually, for example."

**Callie Grey, correct? One of the Blue Flare twins? **

"Yeah. Her. You know, it's really Nyarko's fault that I got Callie and Merry into jokes...although it's my fault Nyarko got the impression that I liked those kinds of jokes. See, she got me this joke book for my birthday after an ill-advised attempt at comunicating and-"

**How does this relate to what happened on Merry's birthday?**

"It does, trust me."

**Okay. As you were saying before my interruption?**

"Right well... Merry was a normal kid before that night. Well..._You know_...More normal than she became after that. Liked those corny jokes from that joke book, loved swimming, slept in about every chance she got... No supernatural powers to speak of. Even Yumeji at that age was less normal than she was- and you know how their parents rank in terms of wackiness."

**Merry's parents are from two separate universes, and her mother happens to have her soul split in two.**

"Exactly, and Merry ended up being about as powerless as she possibly could be. An absolute Zero on the power ranking scale. But she was wide eyed then. Willing to believe just about anything. Merry doesn't into the Digital World's SBURB Power system you know? Even bring it up and she'll scoff it off as something that doesn't make sense. Well, this incident? That's what got her into that."

**...I...See...**

"Yeah, I'll bet you do."

**So what happened on that night?**

"Well, it'd been a normal night up to that point. I picked her up from kindergarten, we played a board game, read from that joke book for a bit, ate dinner, took a bath- usual routine, ya know?"

**Right.**

"Well, right after I'd gotten Merry out of the tub, and I was drying her off with the towel..."

**NINE YEARS AGO_ _ _|**

The world changed around them- from the bathroom of Rei's apartment to an expansive, dark and gloomy checkerboard wasteland- and not just the world, but their own bodies as well.

Merry was suddenly clothed in this white dress and a white jacket that seemed to roll around like fluffy sheep's fur...and she had a hat on.

Rei found herself several years younger, and also wearing her original Unit-00 Plug Suit. "What the-?"

_**Wait. You were suddenly years younger and wearing different clothes?**_

_"Yeah, It was weird. It was like...reliving a memory? Yeah, that fits."_

_**So what happened next?**_

_"We walked for a little while, but at the same time it was like we weren't walking at all, just like a dream, you know? And then..."_

A Wild Tapirmon appeared!

"Woah!" Rei did a double take as the floating ghost Digimon appeared before them. "Who're you?"

"My name is Tapirmon!" The Digimon said with a small bow, "You've stumbled into my Daydream quite accidentally, I'm afraid!" Her arm ring glittered in an unseen light. "Please, follow me, I'll lead you out of here to safety."

_**Tapirmon are usually tame, aren't they? They eat nightmares, not cause them...?**_

_"Yeah, and this girl was just as much of a victim as we were...a bit more so, though."_

_**Why's that?**_

_"Before we could get out of there, we were attacked."_

A giant metal scythe hit the ground- blocking their path as the giant metal gloves that had tossed the weapon floated down to grab hold of it.

"Aunt Rei!" Merry squealed as she hid behind Rei's leg.

"Oh no!" The Tapirmon gasped, "I was hoping I could get you out of here before he showed up!"

"What is that thing!?" Rei asked as a giant hooded, skeletal, metallic body faded into view- shoulders connecting to the metal gauntlets with sudden bursts of blue lightning.

"MetalPhantomon! He's a Nightmare gone wrong!" Tapirmon explained as she began tugging on Rei's arm, "Come on! We've got to run before he eats us!"

"But what about the exit!?" Rei asked as she scooped Merry up and began running away after Tapirmon.

"That one's compromised! If we let MetalPhantomon through, he'll wreak havoc on the waking world!"

_**I'm not really seeing how any of this is your fault, Miss Ayanami.**_

_"Trust me, it is."_

_**It seems more like to me that the entire thing was an accident that couldn't have been avoided.**_

_"You don't understand. That Tapirmon? He was there hunting MetalPhantomon. That MetalPhantomon? He was there trying to hunt _Me. _Merry? She wasn't supposed to be there at all!"_

"He wants _**ME!?**_" Rei asked in horror as they quickly ducked behind a large wall.

"Yes!" Tapirmon shouted over the rushing roar of an energy attack exploding just behind them, "By possessing you and using your body as his vessel!"

"What about Merry?" Rei asked as she held the young girl tightly in a hug.

"She wasn't meant to be here!" Tapirmon said, "I only meant to pull you in, Miss Ayanami, so that way you could help fight him inside your own mental landscape without being caught unaware! But I miscalculated! He grew exponentially when you were brought in! Your own latent psychic potential must have magnified his powers!"

"So what do we do now!?" Rei asked as another energy blast hit their cover.

"RUN!" Tapirmon shouted as a crack filled the air.

_**And then what?**_

_"The wall exploded- I went flying. Hit the dirt hard, and when I came to my senses, Merry was a few yards away from me, holding a dying Tapirmon. MetalPhantomon was leaning over them menacingly...And then..."_

_**And then?**_

_"And then Merry took Tapirmon's data into herself."_

**She did What!?**

The poor Tapirmon exploded into data- and then- those golden particles immediately flowed down into the young girl who had been holding the unfortunate digimon.

Rei and MetalPhantomon both watched in horror as this happened- and then the later felt fear as the tiny girl suddenly sprung up from the ground- sailing through the air like a rocket straight at the metal skull that the beast called a face.

* * *

"There was a crack...then a flash of light...then the next thing I knew, Merry and I were back where we were, and I was still drying her hair off. But...that whole experience wasn't the worst thing. At first, for a moment, I'd thought I'd just dozed off, but then Merry started crying, and..."

**And?**

"And then I noticed that her eyes had changed."

**Changed?**

"You've seen them, haven't you?"

**I'd never noticed, to be honest.**

"Before all of that, Merry's eyes had been normal. Round irises. But after that...? They're what they are now. Rectangular."

**So the Tapirmon's data...?**

"Might have been a part of her to begin with."

**Huh?**

"Merry's mom- Rina Shinomiya- came from a world where souls were split across a divide. A Human- waking- side, and a Digital- dreaming- side. Rina and Rock- two sides of the same coin. They could fuse together though, through a Xros Loader, but it wasn't a natural fusion. Never was. Those two always ended up staying fused together for longer and longer periods of time. Merry was born just before they split apart for the third to last time- the first time in a whole nine months, you see..."

**So you think that the Tapirmon was another half of Merry's soul?**

"I don't think any of us could have realized it until then, but it was the only thing that could have explained the timing of it. The MetalPhantomon was coming after me, and Merry's other half saw it coming and tried to protect us. Tapirmon ended up dying in the process of doing that, but then again...she may have simply just merged with Merry entirely like what I heard happened with Taiki and the Denizen Hephaestus."

**That's a hell of a fusion.**

"You're telling _**me**_ that? Merry was crying for the entire night after that! She wouldn't even go to sleep after that. The entire month after that was just one entire all nighter for her before the exhaustion finally caught up to her."

**Seriously? An entire month?**

"Do you _See_ why I say I did a bad job as a sitter?"

**That doesn't seem fair to you. It's not like you could have known the MetalPhantomon was-**

"Yeah, I know that I couldn't have known. But seriously, I screwed her up bad just by being around her. That entire incident wouldn't have happened if I hadn't been baby sitting her. She started mangling her shirts about two months after that! Then when she got into grade-school, she started getting into fights with other kids... and _don't _get me started on that time she and Yumeji got into a fight over her height!"

**Her height?**

"Seriously? You're asking me about the thing I just told you not to ask me about!"

**I-I'm S-So- **_**I'm Sorry!**_** Um...Could you...stop staring...? **_**please?**_

"..."

_**Please!?**_

"Yeah, fine. Next question?"

**Um...right...What else...'changed' with Merry following this night?  
**

"She switched dominant hands. Right to Left. Almost seamlessly. That just doesn't happen normally."

**Right. **

"And then there's a bunch of other stuff I'm not comfortable with talking about, since that ties right into that height thing again."

**Why are you _staring at me_**_AGAIN?_

"Because it's amusing! Heee~hee..."

**Um...Maybe we could move on to another kid now?**

"Sure thing!"

* * *

**A.N.: Some exposition on Merry, especially following the latest _Vamola! Kyoryuger_ chapter! I don't got much to say on the subject. ^u^  
**


End file.
